he was too far away to hear what he was saying, but he was talking to the squad commander. eventually victor came back and the squad commander launched into this speech about the revolutionary armed forces of colombia, the farc. they were members of the farc. they were there to protect the people of colombia. and we listened. when he was done speaking, victor started speaking to me in english. this man, i don t know. he was trying to appear casual, but he was struggling. he was really trying to pick his words carefully. say it again? this man is no good, no good. he told me he didn t trust
the chief was killed by the paramilitaries. his son was left for dead. from there, they left paille and they went even deeper into panama, all the way to pukuru. i m guessing if victor wasn t convinced before that he was a dead man, he s absolutely convinced he s a dead man now. now. so, victor escapes somewhere between paille and pukuru. this is like a 50-year-old man trying to outrun an entire squad of hardened, trained paramilitary soldiers in the jungle. and he outruns them. warns the village. and by the time the paramilitary show up, the village is empty. they looted, burned a couple of the buildings to the ground, and left. they burned a couple of buildings to the ground, and left. they took what they wanted, burned a couple when i heard about what happened, i blamed myself.
them and he didn t know them, that he was worried. at that point i was really confused. victor didn t know who they were. they claimed they were farc, but they were making up stories about shooting in the jungle. they hadn t killed us. that s good. but it was another story now. how were we going to get out of this? did we just, start looking for a house? oh did you see that listing on zillow i sent you. you see that bathroom? did we just decide to buy house? i think so. yay! find your way home. zillow.
able to negotiate with the chief for guides. i couldn t believe where i was. i felt incredibly fortunate. i felt like i was doing what i set out to do. we were there for a couple of days. victor told us that it would be safer if we made contact with the farc now rather than later. he told us that a local commander with the farc would meet with us. we spent a whole day. we just hung out. but they never showed up. if the farc had showed up, that would have been a huge relief, but that didn t happen. and the following day, we left. leaving paya, i knew we were close to colombia. we were probably about a day or day and a half from the border.
they wanted to see our maps. and they had some questions about paya and who was there and what was there. they decided that they were going into panama for themselves, but they needed a guide to retrace our steps. what did he say? he says they want to take victor with them to panama. there was a brief argument. tell them there is no reason to take him to panama. we were pretty emphatic about it. but victor didn t really say much of anything on his behalf. i think at that point he realized that things were beyond his control. [ speaking spanish ] i mean, we really pleaded with them, but they assured us. they said it s not to worry. we re just going to secure the area. a situation that i put myself in, decision after decision led me to this point of running into